


Five Times Sorry Wasn't Enough

by psocoptera



Category: Love Simon (2018)
Genre: 5 Things, Gen, Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 12:44:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15557967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: "I got an email," his mom says.





	Five Times Sorry Wasn't Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story in which Martin gets a clue about the extent to which his head has been up his ass, and then tries to extract it. If you would rather not read a story about Martin (and seriously, I wouldn't blame you), please note that he's the only canon character in this and nobody more interesting is going to show up even a little bit.
> 
> Content notes: disappointed parents, getting dumped, therapy, a kid OC.
> 
> When I saw the movie, I identified much more with Martin than anyone else (his clothes, his attempts to socialize via sharing random facts, the way no one appreciates his clever Halloween costume), and I thought that was a fascinating choice for a teen movie, that instead of the bad guy being some James Spader one-dimensional evil rich kid, it was someone so relatable. Made me think about what it might be really like to have done such an awful thing, and how one might eventually come to think about it. Martin in this story fails to identify "10 Things I Hate About You" and other romance narratives with grand gestures as part of the culture that has misled him, because I didn't want him to get to blame anything but himself, but I just wanted to throw that in here for anyone still reading this note.

1.

"I got an email today," Martin's mother says, while he's trying to slip from the front door to the stairs, and - oh. Shit. No.

He's been telling himself his parents will never find out about any of it - they're not on social media, and they don't talk much to anyone else's parents. His mother once told him it was like winning the lottery when he became old enough to make his own social plans and she got to stop arranging playdates. Martin's never been quite sure he's had the right grip on that baton, since she handed it off... but, well, it's definitely dropped now.

"An email?" he says. It was probably too much to hope that nobody would forward her Creekwood's biggest meme. Might not even be someone who knew he was her son... just someone who thought it was funny...

"Martin, come in here please," and, shit, that's his _dad_ , his dad shouldn't be home yet, this is... bad.

His mom is sitting on the sofa and his dad is standing by the mantle. They motion him to the other side of the sofa. His mom's eyes are red. Oh god.

"I got an email," his mom says again. "Telling me all about how _you_ published another student's private correspondence and outed his sexuality to the entire school. And first you tried to _blackmail_ him?"

Martin blinks. He has to look away, but his eyes jerk over to his dad, which isn't any better.

"Simon emailed you?" Martin says, finally, swallowing.

"It was signed by a group," his mom says. "I see you know what I'm talking about." She puts her hand over her eyes for a moment, pressing like she does when she has her headaches. "Is Simon okay?"

Martin can't begin to answer that. "Sure, he's okay."

His mom presses her eyes one more time, and drops her hand. "He might not have been," she says. "Martin... some people aren't... nice. His parents could have... you can't be unaware what - "

"He's fine, Mom," Martin interrupts. He's fine the way she means, isn't he?

"I don't know what we didn't teach you that you would think that was okay," she says, voice catching. Her face crumples, and, shit, she's full-out crying.

Martin has no idea what to do. His dad walks over from the mantle, sits down on the arm of the couch, which creaks ominously, and puts his hand on her shoulder.

"We don't know what to do," his dad says. "Our insurance doesn't cover any kind of... family counseling. I've been trying to figure out if they could sue. Invasion of privacy. The boy's parents, I mean." He shakes his head.

"It was stupid," Martin says, like that's an excuse.

"I wish you had told us," his mom says. She's still kind of blubbering. "I wish I was the kind of mom where you could tell me when you were hurting."

Martin can't imagine... what? Coming home after the football game and explaining how he just humiliated himself in front of the entire school? Like that wouldn't have just made it worse? But now, watching her cry... it's like the doves all over again.

"I'm sorry," he says, in a low voice, and she turns away from him, into his dad's side where he's still perched on the arm of the couch. His dad looks over her head at Martin and shakes his head, and Martin wonders what else he's supposed to say, until eventually his dad waves him away and Martin escapes up the stairs.

2.

"My sister searched you," his girlfriend says, and, oh boy. Martin closes the textbook in his lap he's kind of sort of skimming and gives his full attention to the screen.

"Let me guess," he says. "She found the football thing."

"Oh, she found the football thing," his girlfriend repeats, less like she's confirming and more like she's mimicking him. "No, I mean, yeah, she found the football thing, but also she found the _outing_ thing?"

Shit. "What? No," Martin says, because he's looked, himself, of course he has. That's not out there, not that you can google, not with his name involved.

"See, she showed her friend the football thing, and her friend was like, actually, I know this girl whose brother knew that guy. Were you ever going to tell me? How could you never tell me you were involved in something like this."

"I was trying to put it behind me," Martin says. "You know, move on from high school."

"You can't move on from something people need to know about you," she says. "I don't think you understand how scary this is for me. How do I know you wouldn't do something like that to me?"

"What?" Martin says. He wishes he could reach through the screen and grab her, hold her hands or something. "I would never do anything like that to you."

"I hope you're right," she says. "Because I thought about it, should I come over, try to go through your phone, or ask you to do it, ask you to show me that you deleted everything, but that's pointless if you have backups. So I just have to hope."

"I wouldn't ever," Martin says again.

"Would you have said that in high school? I believe you, that you think you wouldn't, right now, but that's what people claim about revenge porn, that it was spontaneous, that they were reacting. Maybe you've just never been that mad at me."

"Well, I'm getting there," Martin snaps, and then feels sick at the way she flinches. She's moved back from her laptop, or shoved it away from her or something, and the new angle makes her look smaller. "Wait, I'm sorry - "

"No, I'm sorry," she says, "I can't do this," and then the screen is blank and the connection is ended.

3.  
_Dear Truly-Sorry,_

_It's hard to feel bottled up with guilt, but that's not an excuse to go spilling it onto others. For the person you've wronged, surprise contact from you might feel threatening, or like a demand for emotional labor that, frankly, they do not owe you in the slightest. If you've really never apologized, you may send one (1) written apology, so long as you make it clear you aren't asking for any kind of response. (We all remember the Frank rules of apology, right? What you did, why it was wrong, how you'll do better, whose feelings matter (hint: not yours)?) If you have already apologized but you're still troubled, then you need to find another way to cope with your guilt, whether that's speaking to a professional, making a donation to a relevant cause (perhaps The Trevor Project), or just thinking about what it would mean for you to sit with this guilt and learn from it._

_Good luck,  
Sergeant Frank_

Martin closes the advice-column tab and sighs.

4.

"No, I don't drink at all," he says. "I figure the last thing I need is less inhibition, right? Less impulse control?"

His therapist looks at him over her notepad. "Do you think of yourself as dangerous to yourself or others?"

"Not like _that_ ," Martin says, although neither of them has specified what _that_ might be. "Just... I made this awful choice, right? So I can make a long list of things I would never do, but in some situation I never thought of, maybe I would make another bad choice, because I know I'm capable of that."

"But I'm hearing that you regret that choice."

"Obviously!" Martin says impatiently. "But until someone invents time travel so I can go back and smack myself, what good is that?"

The therapist just blinks at him.

"I'm trying to figure out something more than regret," Martin says.

5.

"Uh, Dad, why are you telling me this?" his son asks.

Martin had tried to keep it simple - a long time ago he did something really shitty, here's what. Maybe he had kept it _too_ simple.

"The usual parental-advice reasons, I guess," Martin says. "Learn from my mistakes?"

His son makes a soft consonant sound, a little "kuh"; Martin can't tell if it's a sound of agreement or dismissal.

"I was really sure back then I was the good guy," Martin says. "I watched all these old movies, and obviously I wasn't the _bad_ guy. I was smart and funny and I didn't care about fitting in... and people were mean to me, so I didn't think _I_ had any power. We had assemblies about bullying but... maybe if it had ever occurred to me that I _could_ be somebody other than the victim, I wouldn't have been."

His son picks at his thumbnail. "Ok. So this is like a 'be aware of your own strength thing'. Got it."

"Yes and no," Martin says. "It's..." He trails off. It's a "fantasy of talking to his own teenaged self" thing, like if he can't reach back in time to himself with just the right words, the next best thing is to try to give some of those insights to his son. It's probably just as fantastical, though, trying to cram fifty-year-old wisdom into a busy fifteen-year-old head.

"It took me years to get this," he says anyways, because who knows. "I was so focused on whether people liked me, I didn't even ask whether I liked them."

"You had a crush on that girl," his son says uncertainly, which is proof he was listening, at least.

"Other than her," Martin amends. "They had their stupid fashion and memes and at some level I felt superior to all of that even if I also felt left out of it. When Grandma found out about the part about Simon, she asked how I could do something like that, and for a long time I thought it was, like, do it to Julia, that anyone breaks if they're humiliated enough." He shakes his head a little. 

"But, I don't know, I think if there hadn't been that element of contempt there, I would never have done any of it? So I guess that's my big message, go find people to love, find people you really do respect and have that as a counterweight to your natural teenage self-absorption."

"Pffft," his son says, which might be a wry acknowledgment of teen self-absorption, or an ironic denial of it, or something else entirely. Martin can never tell. "Uh, who's Julia, though?"

"Spoilers!" Martin says, making a big excited face, and his son rolls his eyes.

High school was more than two of his son's lifetimes ago, and Martin can't really step back into how he felt. He knows he was sorry, he remembers being sorry, but he can't remember the moment he actually did it at all. He's put together this story about teenaged cruelty and obliviousness, but who knows.

"Did they stay together for a long time?" his son asks suddenly, when Martin is already turning back to his phone and his messages. "The email guys? Like even after high school?"

"I never went to any reunions," Martin says. "I... I don't actually know."

His son makes a noise that might be a grunt, or a laugh.

"It's a good question," Martin says, and lets himself wonder, just for a moment, how Simon tells the story.

**Author's Note:**

> "Sergeant Frank" is a less kind and less well-written Captain Awkward.
> 
> "Do it to Julia" is a reference to _1984_.


End file.
